[Scene: A large posh of­fice. Two clients, well‐​dressed city gents, sit
fac­ing a large ta­ble at which stands Mr. Tid, the ac­count man­ag­er of the
ar­chi­tec­tur­al firm.]

Mr. Tid (Gra­ham Chap­man). Well, gen­tle­men, we have two
ar­chi­tec­tur­al de­signs for this new res­i­den­tial block of yours and I
thought it best if the ar­chi­tects them­selves ex­plained the
par­tic­u­lar ad­van­tages of their de­signs.

[There is a knock at the door.]

Mr. Tid. Ah! That’s prob­a­bly the first ar­chi­tect now. Come
in.

[Mr. Wig­gin en­ters.]

Mr. Wig­gin (John Cleese). Good morn­ing, gen­tle­men.

Clients. Good morn­ing.

Mr. Wig­gin. This is a 12‐​storey block com­bin­ing clas­si­cal
neo‐​Geor­gian fea­tures with the ef­fi­cien­cy of mod­ern tech­niques. The
ten­ants ar­rive here and are car­ried along the cor­ri­dor on a con­vey­or
belt in ex­treme com­fort, past mu­rals de­pict­ing Mediter­ranean scenes,
to­wards the ro­tat­ing knives. The last twen­ty feet of the cor­ri­dor
are heav­i­ly sound­proofed. The blood pours down these chutes and the
man­gled flesh slurps in­to these⁠—​

Client 1. Ex­cuse me.

Mr. Wig­gin. Yes?

Client 1. Did you say “knives”?

Mr. Wig­gin. Ro­tat­ing knives, yes.

Client 2. Do I take it that you are propos­ing to slaugh­ter our
ten­ants?

Mr. Wig­gin. [in­di­cat­ing points of the mod­el] Mind you,
this is a re­al beaut. None of your blood caked on the walls and
flesh fly­ing out of the win­dows in­com­mod­ing the passers‐​by with this
one.
[con­fi­den­tial­ly] My life has been lead­ing up to this.

Client 2. Yes, and well done, but we want­ed an apart­ment
block.

Mr. Wig­gin. May I ask you to re­con­sid­er.

Clients. Well . . .

Mr. Wig­gin. You wouldn’t re­gret this. Think of the tourist
trade.

Client 1. I’m sor­ry. We want a block of flats, not an
abat­toir.

Mr. Wig­gin. . . . I see. Well, of course, this is just the sort
of blink­ered philis­tine ig­no­rance I’ve come to ex­pect from you
non‐​cre­ative garbage. You sit there on your loath­some spot­ty be­hinds
squeez­ing black­heads, not car­ing a tin­ker’s cuss for the strug­gling
artist. You ex­cre­ment, you whin­ing hyp­o­crit­i­cal toad­ies with your
colour tv sets and your Tony Jack­lin golf
clubs and your bleed­ing ma­son­ic se­cret hand­shakes. You wouldn’t let
me join, would you, you black­balling bas­tards. Well I wouldn’t
be­come a Freema­son if you went down on your stink­ing knees and
begged me.

Client 2. We’re sor­ry you feel that way but we did want a
block of flats, nice though the abat­toir is.

Mr. Wig­gin. Oh sod the abat­toir, that’s not im­por­tant.
[He dash­es for­ward and kneels in front of them.]
But if any of you could put in a word for me I’d love to be a
ma­son. Ma­son­ry opens doors. I’d be very qui­et, I was a bit on
edge just now but if I were a ma­son I’d sit at the back and not get
in any­one’s way.

Client 1. [po­lite­ly] Thank you.

Mr. Wig­gin. . . . I’ve got a sec­ond‐​hand apron.

Client 2. Thank you.

[Mr. Wig­gin hur­ries to the door but stops . . .]

Mr. Wig­gin. I near­ly got in at Hen­don.

Client 1. Thank you.

[Mr. Wig­gin ex­its. Mr Tid ris­es.]

Mr. Tid. I’m sor­ry about that. Now the sec­ond ar­chi­tect is Mr.
Wymer of Wymer and Dib­ble.

[Mr. Wymer en­ters, car­ry­ing his mod­el with great care. He places it on
the ta­ble.]

Mr. Wymer. Good morn­ing gen­tle­men. This is a scale mod­el of
the block, 28 sto­ries high, with 280 apart­ments. It has three main
lifts and two ser­vice lifts. Ac­cess would be from Dib­bin­g­ley
Road.

[The mod­el falls over. Mr Wymer quick­ly places it up­right
again.]

The struc­ture is built on a cen­tral pil­lar sys­tem with⁠—​

[The mod­el falls over again. Mr Wymer tries to make it stand up,
but it won’t, so he has to hold it up­right.]

—⁠with can­tilevered floors in pre‐​stressed steel and con­crete.
The di­vid­ing walls on each floor sec­tion are fixed by re­cessed
mag­nal­i­um‐​flanged grooves.

[The bot­tom ten floors of the mod­el give way and it part­ly
col­laps­es.]

By avoid­ing wood and tim­ber de­riv­a­tives and all oth­er in­flam­ma­bles
we have al­most to­tal­ly re­moved the risk of⁠—​

[The mod­el is smok­ing. The odd flame can be seen. Wymer looks at the
city gents.]

Frankly, I think the cen­tral pil­lar may need strength­en­ing.

Client 2. Is that go­ing to put the cost up?

Mr. Wymer. I’m afraid so.

Client 2. I don’t know we need to wor­ry too much about
strength­en­ing that. Af­ter all, these are not meant to be lux­u­ry
flats.

Client 1. Ab­solute­ly. If we make sure the ten­ants are of light
build and rel­a­tive­ly seden­tary and if the weath­er’s on our side, I
think we have a win­ner here.